Mess. These letters come from your father.[2878]
Hot. Letters from him! why comes he not himself?[2879]15
Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he is grievous sick.[2879][2880]
Hot. 'Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick[2881]
In such a justling time? Who leads his power?
Under whose government come they along?
Mess. His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord.[2882]20
Wor. I prithee, tell me, doth he keep his bed?
Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth;
And at the time of my departure thence
He was much fear'd by his physicians.[2883]
Wor. I would the state of time had first been whole[2884]25
Ere he by sickness had been visited:
His health was never better worth than now.
Hot. Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect
The very life-blood of our enterprise;
'Tis catching hither, even to our camp.30
He writes me here, that inward sickness—[2885]
And that his friends by deputation could not[2886]
So soon be drawn, nor did he think it meet[2886]
To lay so dangerous and dear a trust
On any soul removed but on his own.35
Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,
That with our small conjunction we should on,
To see how fortune is disposed to us;
For, as he writes, there is no quailing now,
Because the king is certainly possess'd40
Of all our purposes. What say you to it?
Wor. Your father's sickness is a maim to us.